“Now, then, Babbalanja,” said Media, “what have you come to in all this rhapsody?  You everlastingly travel in a circle.”

“And so does the sun in heaven, my lord; like me, it goes round, and gives light as it goes.  Old Bardianna, too, revolved.  He says so himself.  In his roundabout chapter on Cycles and Epicycles, with Notes on the Ecliptic, he thus discourseth:—­’All things revolve upon some center, to them, fixed; for the centripetal is ever too much for the centrifugal.  Wherefore, it is a perpetual cycling with us, without progression; and we fly round, whether we will or no.  To stop, were to sink into space.  So, over and over we go, and round and round; double-shuffle, on our axis, and round the sun.’  In an another place, he says:—­’There is neither apogee nor perigee, north nor south, right nor left; what to-night is our zenith, to-morrow is our nadir; stand as we will, we stand on our heads; essay to spring into the air, and down we come; here we stick; our very bones make glue.’”

“Enough, enough, Babbalanja,” cried Media.  “You are a very wise Mardian; but the wisest Mardians make the most consummate fools.”

“So they do, my lord; but I was interrupted.  I was about to say, that there is no place but the universe; no limit but the limitless; no bottom but the bottomless.”

CHAPTER XL Of The Sorcerers In The Isle Of Minda

“Tiffin! tiffin!” cried Media; “time for tiffin!  Up, comrades! and while the mat is being spread, walk we to the bow, and inhale the breeze for an appetite.  Hark ye, Vee-Vee! forget not that calabash with the sea-blue seal, and a round ring for a brand.  Rare old stuff, that, Mohi; older than you:  the circumnavigator, I call it.  My sire had a canoe launched for the express purpose of carrying it thrice round Mardi for a flavor.  It was many moons on the voyage; the mariners never sailed faster than three knots.  Ten would spoil the best wine ever floated.”

Tiffin over, and the blue-sealed calabash all but hid in the great cloud raised by our pipes, Media proposed to board it in the smoke.  So, goblet in hand, we all gallantly charged, and came off victorious from the fray.

Then seated again, and serenely puffing in a circle, the circumnavigator meanwhile pleasantly going the rounds, Media called upon Mohi for something entertaining.

Now, of all the old gossips in Mardi, surely our delightful old Diodorus was furnished with the greatest possible variety of histories, chronicles, anecdotes, memoirs, legends, traditions, and biographies.  There was no end to the library he carried.  In himself, he was the whole history of Mardi, amplified, not abridged, in one volume.

In obedience, then, to King Media’s command, Mohi regaled the company with a narrative, in substance as follows:—­